


dolci ricordi

by wereheretostay



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Book References, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, they are both oversized children
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 19:54:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18785089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wereheretostay/pseuds/wereheretostay
Summary: “You and your ice-crunching. They say that ruins your teeth, you know. If that won’t stop you from doing it, let this: I’m trying to concentrate and all I can think about is your stupid mouth and teeth and your stupid ice-crunching.” He’s still scratching his elbow and still looking down at his book. “Maybe we should go for a swim, cool off.”But the mention of my mouth, of the ice inside it, brings a different thought to my head. “I have a better idea.”(or, a collection of moments from summer, 1983.)





	1. ghiaccio

“Today must be the hottest day yet. How do you stand this godawful heat twelve hours a day, every day? Don’t even get me started on the humidity.” Oliver groans, breaking the cicada-laden silence we’d been sharing for the past half hour. “I’m about to soak through a second shirt just this morning.” 

I roll my eyes at his dramatics but don't respond. He had been whining about this or the other all morning, his voice smoothing over my ears every once in a while from his lawn chair next to mine. I suspect he’s grumpy because there wasn’t apricot juice at breakfast this morning, or perhaps more plausibly because I didn't let him touch me in the shower earlier, but find his grumbling too amusing to really mind.

The heat today is indeed wretched: sun rays searing into us as soon as we stepped past the doorway, humidity draping over every inch of skin like a thick winter blanket in summer. The ice in my near-empty glass is barely holding onto its solid form, watering down my drink with its weeping. And don’t even get me started on the bugs – 

“And I’ve got this awful bug bite, more on my legs, I wonder if Anchise could do something about that? Another concoction of his, maybe.” Oliver continues after a few minutes, scratching at the inside of his elbow with the hand not holding his book. 

I make a non-committal noise as I swallow what’s left of my lemonade. I'm only half-listening, trying to read my old copy of _Le Rouge et le Noir_. All that’s left in the glass are ice cubes, and I start to chew on that too. Anything to stave off the awful heat. 

“You and your ice-crunching. They say that ruins your teeth, you know. I know that won’t stop you from doing it, so let this: I’m trying to concentrate and all I can think about is your stupid ice-crunching and your stupid mouth and teeth.” He’s still scratching his elbow and still looking down at his book. “Maybe we should go for a swim, cool off.”

The mention of my mouth, of the ice inside it, brings an immediate thought to my head. “I have a better idea.” 

“A better idea?” He finally turns away from his book to look at me. His eyebrow is raised, suspecting something by the tone of my voice – sometimes I forget how well he can read me. “I’m trying to cool off, remember?”

I make another noise in my throat and spill a single ice cube into my mouth, then swivel over to face him. He’s looking at me, waiting, wondering what I’m about to do. His long fingers still haven’t left the bite on the inside of his elbow. I gently move his hand, and then lean in to place my mouth on the same spot. 

I let the ice cube slip between my open lips, pressed right up against his skin, against the bug bite. His grip on my hand tightens and I feel more than hear his sharp intake of breath as the cold hits his inflamed skin and he tenses. I pull the ice further back into my mouth to suck against the skin: it is soft, numb-raw with ice, and I can feel the raised bite against my lips as I kiss, lave, tease him. 

Soon the ice cube melts and with one final graze of my teeth against the pinkening skin, I pull away and sit back. His hand has found its way to my bare thigh, placed too high to be appropriate on the patio (as if what I just did was appropriate on the patio, I concede), and he’s looking at me with widened pupils and an open mouth. 

“Better now?” I echo his words of what feels simultaneously like yesterday but also like a lifetime ago. 

“Elio-“ he starts, but I don’t let him finish.

I grab another piece of ice from my glass, and without thinking, slip it down the back of his shirt. 

He yelps, free hand coming off my thigh to reach up into his button down, and finds the ice cube. He mock-glares at the ice cube, and then at me. Then he presses that same cube against my lips, pressing until I am forced to part my lips and the cold of the ice against my teeth pulls goosebumps from my bones all the way down my arms. I suck the ice into my mouth and his fingers come with it, pushing down on my bottom teeth, onto my tongue. He watches me as I watch him, watches his fingers wet inside my mouth, watches my tongue moving between them and the ice cube.

Suddenly he pulls his fingers out of my mouth. He grabs the glass of ice and my wrist and drags me inside into a guest room. 

He pushes me up against the closed door and kisses me firmly. His mouth is warmed now, no traces left of the cold ice, but then he pulls away to tilt the ice from the glass into his mouth and licks into me again, his tongue hot but burning cold at the same time, ice slipping from his mouth into mine until I can’t tell where it is exactly. 

The ice bangs against my teeth but his tongue soothes it, running over them and over the roof of my mouth and over my own tongue. We kiss until the ice melts, until our mouths are hot again, until I’m panting so hard I have to pull away. 

I rest my head against his chest, breathing heavily. He is, too, and he was right earlier: his shirt is damp from the humidity, from his sweat. I smell his soap, the chamomile of the laundry detergent, salt. I am warm and he is warm and despite it rolling off our bodies in almost tangible waves I could stay here forever, the heat melding us together until we become one. 

Then he pours the rest of the half-melted ice from the glass on top of my head. “Payback, you goose.” 

It’s so unexpected a sound looses from my throat and I jump back, shaking the wetness from my hair onto him. “You only got a single ice cube, you foul, unprincipled, dirty –“ 

He cuts me off with another kiss, and when he continues to laugh into my mouth, I swallow the sound along with this moment to keep forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this just spilled out in a few short minutes after being inspired by my own ice-chewing, so sorry for any mistakes! I'm thinking of perhaps turning this into a little series of lost moments from their last few weeks together ... i love my big babies
> 
> also note the (very original and creative) title "ghiaccio," which means ice in Italian!


	2. piedi

My mother gave up on chiding me for forgoing shoes long ago when I was still a child, but sometimes when I come out sans shoes to greet guests on the front porch or, heaven forbid ride my bike barefoot, she adopts that mildly scolding, distasteful look on her face that means _go find your sandals before I have to put them on your feet myself_. I ignore it, most of the time, in favor of escaping the situation that requires shoes entirely. 

However, the exact look has somehow found its way onto Oliver’s face, as if the precise cock of the eyebrows and curve of the lips had been pasted directly from my mother’s own features onto Oliver’s. 

It shocks me, the first time, when we’re about to go for a ride a couple weeks into his stay and he stops in his tracks at the sight of my exposed feet on the pedals. “Are you not going to wear shoes?”

He looks as if my bare feet are personally offending him, as if they’re his own feet he’s worried about rather than mine. “No?”

He shakes his head, smiling slightly like I’ve endeared myself to him with yet another habit of mine. “ _Italiani._ ” He says, in imitation of our frequent “Americano” teasing. He speeds away in front of me. 

The look appears a few more times, most notably when we’re walking across the gravel or wooden dock outside or climbing rocks by the beach, but it is usually quickly overtaken by a look of fondness, by a chuckle or shake of his head. It feels brotherly, caring, achingly heedful of me. 

But, as much as my mother and Oliver display concern for my feet, I have traipsed around barefoot long enough that my feet are no longer smooth, delicate, vulnerable to pebbles or splinters. However, I often forget that the tennis courts bask all day in the sun and consequently burn on contact like nothing else. 

Today is one of those days. 

I didn’t have sneakers on this morning as we had only been at my table under the lime tree, but suddenly Oliver decided he wanted to play tennis. He was restless, he said, needed to get his energy out before he could concentrate on his manuscript. I had told him there were other ways I could deprive him of his energy, but he had only smirked at me and insisted on playing a match or two that morning. 

I was okay at first, moving around enough on the court that had only soaked a few before-noon hours in the sun that day, but after about an hour has passed and the sun is directly overhead, I can’t stand still on the turf for very long. 

Oliver laughs at my constant moving from the other side of the net. “It’s your own fault, what did shoes ever do to you?” 

I mock his laugh from my side of the net, serving the ball to him. “I just prefer to not wear them.” 

“I prefer to not wear pants, do you see me doing that all day long?” He serves the ball back, grinning. 

“Maybe you should give into your preferences.” I miss the ball and it goes bouncing off somewhere to my left. “I certainly wouldn’t mind.” 

I go to retrieve the ball from where it’s landed, near the corner of the court against the lip of the grass. When I turn around Oliver is on my side of the court, tossing his racket from hand to hand, weight on one hip. 

“Come here,” He says, setting down the racket. 

I obey, still holding the ball in my hand. He just looks at me a pace or two in front of him, unmoving, nonspeaking. Without our teasing and joking the air suddenly feels heavy, quiet, all other sounds of life in the villa far away. 

“You might not mind, but your mother might.” He grins again, extending a hand to me, and the moment has been interrupted- _pause_. I take it, unsure if he wants the ball or my hand, but he twines his fingers with mine regardless. 

“Mafalda too, for that matter.” I chuckle at the image that comes to my mind, of Oliver walking around the lunch table in only his tiny underwear. "You should wear those pink striped ones that your butt hangs halfway out of."

Oliver pulls me into him by my hand, setting the other on my hip, teasing below the hem of my shirt. His grin is still halfway on his lips, never really leaving them these days, but I can see that look I’ve almost memorized by now come into his eyes. _Play_.

He thumbs around my hipbone, around the waistband of my swimming trunks, and leans in to whisper into my ear. “Maybe you should forgo pants as well.” 

His breath is hot against my ear, my hairline, but still cooler than the sweat that’s beginning to bead there. He places his lips softly against my earlobe, flicks out his tongue, his teeth, well-aware that the tennis court is hidden by the tree line and not visible from any spot in the house or yard. I imagine he tastes salt on my skin. 

He keeps going, licking down my neck, but suddenly I become painfully conscious of my feet on the scorching ground and can’t help but jump from one to the other. Oliver makes a noise of protest into the junction between my neck and shoulder. _Stop moving_. Soon, though, he realizes what I’m doing, and pulls away to laugh at me. 

“Now your insistence on being barefoot is interfering with too much – this is where I draw the line. Shoes for you, always, from now on.” He teases me, one hand still digging relentlessly into my hip. 

I’m still jumping from foot to foot. I furrow my eyebrows, and then without a second thought, step up onto his own feet. I bring an arm up around his neck to steady myself, and enjoying the gap in height being lessened, lean in almost-straight to kiss him on the mouth. 

His thumb curves into the space under my hipbone as I kiss him. His tongue is hot in my mouth, along my teeth, the roof of my mouth. He tastes like heat, like mint and salt and regular saliva, warm and pliable like taffy, like sea clay, like sun-warmed and sun-risen bread dough.

I breathe him in deeply through my mouth and through my nose, I press into his shoulders, his chest, his hips, his ankles and the tops of his feet. 

Oliver makes a noise into my mouth before pulling away, and the next thing I know I’m being swung over his shoulder and carried over to the grass surrounding the tennis court. I bang my fists against his back in protest, but I’m laughing too much for it to mean anything. He just presses a kiss to the inside of my knee and in it, I can feel his smile. 

Once he sets me down again on the grass I smirk at him. “See, I don’t need shoes, I have you.” 

“You goose,” He says, and kisses me again.

Later that night at the dinner table he places his foot over mine, as is his habit these days, and I’m struck once again by how smooth his feet are, how soft, fragile, they are compared to mine. Even later, when I have one foot pressed into his side and the other against his mouth as he kneels above me, I ask if he minds that mine are not smooth as his are. No, he says, he likes the firmer, sometimes rough skin, and he likes that I don’t always wear shoes. He kisses each toe, the arch, the sole, and I find myself once again overwhelmed by him, always overwhelmed by him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was 100% inspired by that little anecdote Timothée shares in the commentary during the first piano/flirting scene, where he says before takes the ground would be so hot he would have to stand on Armie's feet before they began shooting again. 
> 
> piedi = feet. I'm so inventive with these titles, I know. let's also play "how many chapters can I name in Italian despite me speaking absolutely zero Italian before I mess one up"


	3. stelle

“You’ve never been paddle boarding?” I gape incredulously at him. He’s never been paddle boarding?

“I’ve never been paddle boarding.” He shakes his head at me, thumbing my chin as he brushes past me. “Close your mouth, a fly might find its way in.” 

I watch him wander into the kitchen to refill his glass of water. He wets his hand under the tap and runs it through his hair, slicking back the strands. The way he does it is graceful – I’m more inclined to dunk my entire head under the faucet, shaking my head not quite hard enough to dislodge the drops of water that will still run down my neck as I make my way back under the outside sun. 

Oliver is poking around the kitchen now. He does this, sometimes, when Mafalda isn’t there between meals and he decides he needs a snack. He’ll open the fridge, peek into the pantry, toss the various fruits and vegetables on the counter in his hands before he decides nothing is going to satisfy him but Mafalda’s cooking, or a freshly picked apricot he’ll then go to retrieve. 

(One time, I walked in from the hall to witness him biting into a tomato whole. He looked at me, confused, and offered me a bite. I think he finished the entire thing like that.) 

He sips at his water and stares at the lemons sitting by the sink. I stare at the lemons too, trying to see what he sees. 

He asks, “Did you want to go?” 

“What, paddle boarding?” 

“Yes, paddle boarding. Do you want to go?”

I look outside the window at the two-in-the-afternoon sun and make a noise in the back of my throat. “Too hot right now, we’d burn up.” 

Oliver refills his water glass another time. It’s his third in less than ten minutes; any moment now he’s going to have to dash to the washroom. I think he must know I like to watch the line of his throat when he swallows, the stretch of his jawline when he tilts his head back to empty the glass. 

“Why don’t we go later tonight, after dinner?” He suggests. “As far as I know, we don’t have any pressing plans.” 

“Oh, we’d most likely skip them even if we did. You know that as well as I do by now.” I make my way over to his side of the kitchen counter and steal a sip from his glass. “Which, speaking of, is starting to make Mafalda suspicious, I think.” 

Oliver takes his glass back and downs a final refill before grabbing my wrist and pulling me out of the kitchen. He winks over his shoulder and I know exactly what he’s about to say: “Nothing to worry about.” 

He leads me up the stairs and deposits me in front of the pushed-together beds. “Stay here, I have to pee.” 

His voice drifts out of the bathroom seconds later to ask me why I’m laughing. 

-

I’d almost forgotten about our promise to go out to the beach until my mother asks at the tail-end of dinner what mine and Oliver’s plans are for tonight, and Oliver mentions maybe going out on the water a bit later. My mother’s lips curl up into a smile that I can never decide the meaning of – does she suspect us, or not? As the days go on, I’m finding I wouldn’t really mind if she did. 

My father, who I am sure suspects us, shoos us away from the table a bit early with the promise we clear our own plates. We try not to be too loud while climbing the staircase. 

I lay on the back across the beds as Oliver tries to find a dry bathing suit somewhere in the room. I offer him one of mine, but he finds the blue one he so rarely wears and slips into it. The blue suit, my favorite suit; it is the sky, the sea, the color of trust and shoulder-massaging and butterfly kisses. My color theory has long been disproved but seeing him wear it still makes me warm. 

Oliver slips his shoes on, I slip mine off at the entrance to my room, and we are bounding back down the stairs again to the shed. 

“You’re going to have to teach me how to not fall over,” Oliver says as we walk to the beach with boards and paddles under our arms. “I’m not so sure of my balance on one of these things.” 

I knock my shoulder into his. “Poor Oliver, afraid of falling into the water? That’s half the fun!” 

He screws his face up in imitation of mine. “No, but I want to be able to actually paddle, on my feet, not on my knees or anything like that.” 

“Oh, I see - you want to look cool. _La muvi star_ , of course you would. Silly _Americano_ , no one is going to see you out here.” 

Oliver laughs, knocking his shoulder back into mine. “Yeah, just you.” 

“Yeah, just me.” I lean back into him, not pulling away immediately this time. I reach down and link my pinkie with his. “I promise I’ll teach you how to not fall over.” 

The dirt under our feet turns into sand and we are greeted with the empty expanse of the beach, dark blue water shining in the slowly setting sun. This cove has always been perfect for paddle boarding as the water is calm enough to insure a steady board underfoot. 

Oliver steps out of his shoes and joins me in the water, straddling his board like he doesn’t know what to do with it. His paddle is resting over his thighs and I can’t help but smile at him, looking up at me with his hands unsure in his lap like a child waiting on his teacher. 

“Okay, watch what I do.” I say and hand him my paddle. I rise on one knee, then the other, then on one foot, then the other, until I’m standing comfortably on the board. The gentle rocking reminds me of being on the boat, of surfing and swimming on a far-away coast, of napping on the floating dock – it is second nature, a sway my body remembers even when lying still on my bed. 

I take the paddles from him and rest them on the board in front of my feet. “Your turn?”

He nods and takes my proffered hand. He’s a bit unsteady, laughing at himself and then at me as I try to guide him into standing from my own wavering perch, but he finally lifts himself onto his feet. 

I pull my hand from his and clap excitedly at him. “You did it! No falling!” 

His knees are bent and his arms fully extended from his sides but he’s laughing with me. “We’ll see. Now I have to move this thing.” 

“Oh, that’s the easy part,” I respond, and hand him his paddle. 

We end up circling around the cove a few times as Oliver grows more confident on the board. He does well, and only stumbles once, when we’re a bit further out from the cove and a little bump of a wave surfaced and caught him off-guard. He immediately reached a hand out to my shoulder and gripped on tightly until he could steady himself again. 

I tell him as much when we’ve lowered ourselves back down to sit cross-legged on the boards. His cheeks pinken at my compliment and he is again a school boy I am looking down on, so forgettably yet so obviously shy. 

(It is in this moment that I realize I praise him in the way my lips brush against his neck, in the way I kneel in front of him to take him in my mouth, in the way his words echo around my head days after he first said them – but rarely in spoken affirmation. I worship him, and this he knows, yet it is often a silent, languorous laudation. 

If only to watch the blush dip on his cheeks, I commit to do so more often.)

The sun dipped below the horizon several minutes ago but the sky is still holding onto its last streaks of golden-orange. There are lights back further on the beach, a lighthouse and several homes and the outline of the city of N. in the distance, so we are not bathed in pitch-darkness. It is still enough for me to make out Oliver’s expressions, his body, to see him lean forward to place his hand on my knee before the touch startles me. 

“Thank you.” He says, softly, thumb stroking the ball of my knee. 

“For what?” 

He’s quiet a moment. I can almost hear him thinking, turning his words over in his head, wanting them to come out right in a moment that is so suddenly shaded with vulnerability. I see his shoulders shrug up and down before he speaks again. 

“For always helping me.” He squeezes my kneecap. His eyes are limpid, tender, almost callow. “For just being there, I guess. For being here.” 

He sometimes bares so much honesty, so much raw emotion and feeling, that it crashes over me and I struggle to breathe. He overwhelms me, his words flooding into my veins and rushing through every limb and extremity until I am buzzing numb with warmth and affection and something in between infatuation, idolatry, obsession, love. 

_You’re the one to thank for being here._

I kiss him in response. 

I push into his mouth, into him, giving and taking, withholding and begging. He is the sun’s warmth still clinging to my biceps, he is the lull of the water against our boards, he is the water in my hair in my palm in my eyes in my _mouth_ , and I’m gasping against his mouth and biting his lip and digging my fingernails into his shoulder and thrumming against him like a live wire, and I want more, more, and he leans back, letting me take, take, take – 

And then suddenly I push too hard and we are in the water again. 

It isn’t too deep and I am laughing out loud as soon as I can pull enough air into my lungs to do so. I reach out and pull myself to Oliver again and laugh until I’m wheezing. _Hey, hey, hey_ , he’s whispering into my ear between laughs of his own, and finally I compose myself and wrap my arms around him. 

He slips his hand into my trunks, on top of my right thigh. He squeezes softly.

“Can I take these off?” The question is so casual and soft, dripping into my ears like honey, sweet and innocent-sounding against the hand that is beginning to wander. I nod, and help him wrestle my legs out of them until they are tossed up on the board beside us. 

I wrap my legs around him again. Despite being covered by the water, I feel so exposed, so loose in the water. There is something _decided_ about being completely naked against him still clothed, something that hardens me even further and has my pulse picking up. I feel him under his suit and suddenly need him unclad as well. 

His suit comes off and then I feel him against me. All of him is hot, burning warm in the cool water, but his own cock is thick and heady against mine and it draws a moan past my lips. We are weightless, unbridled, intemperate.

He whispers my name while touching me, and I cry out heedlessly when I come. He is silent when I take him in hand, biting his lip and closing his eyes, but that is not good enough for me. I want more. I need more.

“Get up on the board.” I tell him, and knowing immediately what I’m after, he lifts himself unceremoniously onto the edge of the paddle board and spreads his legs for me.

I lick a stripe up his cock, take him into my mouth, suck and tongue and tease until finally, _finally_ , he moans out my name and then, _oh_ , then, lets slip a noise so beautiful I want to swallow it whole and keep in my own throat forever. He comes half into my hand and half onto the board, and we let the water wash away it all. 

Afterwards we both lie on our backs on the boards and watch the occasional cloud pass over the moon. I could almost go to sleep like this, womb-warm and drifting and content. 

Oliver stirs next to me, letting one foot drop into the water. “There’s Orion.” He says, pointing up at the sky. 

I blink my eyes back into focus and locate the constellation easily. It was the first constellation my father ever showed me. 

“Some say that nebulae, there in the stars of the sword, is a gap in the sky. A hole in the fabric of the universe.” I chuckle at the theory told to me by an old professor while I was a child. “A stargate, a celestial bridge to another world.”

“Shall we see if we can jump up there? A gate to heaven – doesn’t sound so bad.” 

I exhale a laugh through my nose. We fall back into silence for a while, the sweet lap of the water and intermittent hoot of a barn owl the only accompanying sounds. 

The sky is relatively clear and picking out constellations is unchallenging: Cassiopeia, Ursa Major and Minor. I am reminded of nights staring out a telescope from the upstairs balcony with my parents, and of touring the planetarium in New York when I was younger and coming home to pick out what I had learned about in my father’s astronomy books. 

“Scorpious was always my favorite one.” I say. 

“A shame we can’t see it yet,” Oliver responds. Scorpious won’t be in our sky for a few month’s time; by that point, it will be too cold to be out on the night water like we are now. I will have to spot it from inside the house, perhaps from the attic windows. I try not to think about Scorpious or autumn and the fact that their staining arrival means Oliver’s departure. Instead I think about the gods and try to remember all seven of the Pleiades’ names; I can only remember five and then I am thinking about the story Orion and Scorpious again. 

“Scorpious and Orion, banned to different horizons. Which one am I?” 

“Orion,” Oliver says. He leans over to touch my cheek and I see sadness in his eyes, feel it dripping from his fingertips. “You belong in the summer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first off, here's a bit about the astronomy references: enemies Orion and Scorpious were placed by Zeus in different horizons so that they would never fight again. yes, I intentionally switched Orion and Scorpious's seasonal positions. Orion is a winter sky constellation and Scorpious a summer one, but I found that little bit about Orion's sword and the gate to heaven/gap in space so interesting (my choir teacher in grade school actually told us that story, which is why I know it!) that I needed Orion to be in the sky to include it. you could also go into depth about Oliver and Elio relating to Scorpious and Orion - Scorpious is eternally chasing Orion, Orion stepped on Scorpious but Scorpious ultimately hurt Orion, they're forever trying to get back to fight each other, they will never see each other again due to living in different skies etc - but there are so many comparisons that I decided to stick with the sole fact that Elio lives in summer, primarily in what will be Oliver's memory of this summer. :( 
> 
> and stelle, of course, = stars. 
> 
> my apologies for any errors/ugly writing in this ~~I forgot how to write smut~~. I hope you enjoyed! ♡


	4. caldo

My skin is so sticky with humidity that when Oliver kneels his way onto the bed and over to me, I immediately groan at him. “Don’t touch me. It’s too hot.” 

He drapes himself over me anyway and laughs at my attempts to push him off. “Sounds like a personal problem there. I feel just fine.”

His face is half-smushed into my stomach, one arm above his head and the other thumbing my scrunched nose. He laughs again and I feel the sound of it warm inside my ribs. 

“Why don’t you go swimming or something, cool off?” He asks me. 

His finger is still poking at my nose, my chin, so I stick my tongue out in an attempt to lick him and get him to stop. I don’t miss, but it doesn’t work. He moves his finger to my lips, tracing side to side like he did that first time we kissed. “Going to have to try better than that, goose – your tongue doesn’t phase me. In fact,” and he pushes down on my lower lip and into my mouth, “I love your tongue.” 

I roll my eyes at his dramatically lowered eyelids and bite down gently on the now two fingers he has in my mouth. His hands smell like citrus, like he's been squeezing lemons for lemonade, and I can almost taste the acidity clinging to his skin. “Get off of me.” 

To my surprise, he pulls out his fingers and pushes himself off my torso. For about a second while he just looks at me, face unreadable, I think he’s going to get up and leave, but then he shifts to plant a knee on either side of my hips. 

He sits down on my thighs and I groan again. “You – this isn’t any better than before.”

Smirking at me, he leans forward to press a finger against my lips in a shushing motion, before pressing past and against my teeth again. Then he kisses me, his finger still hooked on my bottom row of teeth, before slipping it out wet and down my neck. 

He kisses me gently at first, his mouth soft like sun-warmed fruit, but quickly he slips his tongue in to meet mine. His thumb is bruising into the base of my neck and I become aware of his weight on my lap, of my hands inching up his thighs. 

I push further into his mouth, my hips beginning to move up unconsciously, but then he plants his palms on my chest and pulls away. “Really, no better?” 

I blow out a breath, look up at the ceiling. “Maybe a bit better.” 

“Only a bit?” He says in pretend offense. “Well, then, allow me.” 

And he moves back on my legs, hands coming down from my chest to the waistband of my shorts. He watches me as he does so, gauging my reaction. He waits for me to tilt my head forward in a nod before he undoes the zipper, pushes my shorts down a bit, and reaches into my underwear. 

I’m already half-hard when he pulls out my cock, and his smirk grows wider at this. He looks up at me, eyes narrowed, as if to say _are you sure that wasn’t any better?_ I bat at his shoulder. 

He puts his mouth on me and the contrast of my skin, warm yet not as hot as his mouth against me, almost raises goosebumps on my arms. I throw an arm over my forehead and hold his neck with the other. 

Oliver takes his time sucking me off, just like he took his time in kissing me. He moves slowly but purposefully, easy and barely-there but enough to make me feel it, to keep the pit of my stomach warm with lazy arousal. He takes time to breathe, sometimes just letting the weight of me sit in his mouth, and it’s nice – it’s nice to take the time to savor moments like these instead of being so high off desire that we can’t get up to the room fast enough, come fast enough. 

I watch the dip of his head, my length sliding in and out of his mouth, his hands wrapped firm right below the jut of my hipbones, and think that I could stay like this forever – loose, sun-soft and warm in Oliver’s hands. 

I open my eyes to look down at him. His lips are a pretty, slick pink and his cheeks are beginning to flush the same and it suddenly fills me with a sense of urgency. I slide my hand up the hot skin of his neck to tug on his hair. He meets my gaze, understanding, and then sinks down on me. 

Even though he can go all the way down he uses his hand to pump the bottom half of my cock until my hips are forcing up into his hands. He tongues at the head the way he knows pulls me apart and I have to bite my lip to not let the noise in the back of my throat slip. Oliver must hear me though, for he looks up at me, eyebrows lowered and knowing. He brings a hand down to grip the base of my cock and slows, expectant.

For a moment I just stare back at him, unwilling to give him what he wants. But then he tightens his fingers, pushes the ones of his other hand hard into the skin of my navel, and my resolve falters under the need for him to _move_ again. 

“Okay, okay, it’s better – it’s better, Oliver, it is, it –“ I bury my face in my arm and feel him laughing around me, exhaling through his nose, smug that he’s making me beg. “I’m close, Oliver-“ 

He moves his hand down to circle my rim and I come with my teeth in my bicep. 

Without moving his hand from between my thighs he pulls off. He sits back and scrubs his forearm across his forehead, smile coming loosely to his now-swollen lips. “How about that swim?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been busy with summer classes and haven't been really inspired or able to write, so this is kind of a little attempt to get myself back into the swing of things and past my block - I still have lots of plans for this little fic, even if updates are short & slow!
> 
> caldo = hot. still continuing on with the great title originality!


	5. lime

Despite it not even being ten in the morning yet, the air is heavy with late-summer heat and the shade of the lime tree is doing little to break it it. We’ve only yet picked a single cluster of limes, four of them sitting bright green at the bottom of the basket, and I’m already reaching up to wipe my brow. It's times like these that I wish for a rainstorm, for clouds and big raindrops even if it means suffering the humidity. 

“I would think you’d be used to this heat by now.” Oliver says the second time I scrub the back of my hand across my forehead. He stops, lime in hand, and looks at me. “You’d also think you’d be a bit more tan, but.” 

I kick his ankle. He loves to tease me about how my pale skin doesn't tan easily; ever since the first few times he saw me with my shirt off he's joked about it. I wonder if he really finds it funny, or if he secretly likes the contrast of his skin against mine as much as I do. “Can’t all be as blessedly bronzed as you.” 

Oliver tosses the lime at me instead of the basket and reaches back up into the tree. 

I do the same, balancing on my tiptoes where he is flat-footed, and we pick a few more limes in silence. 

The fruit comes off the tree like it was just waiting to be taken. Mom was right when she suggested we pick them after breakfast; a few days more and they would have shriveled and fallen to the ground. I'm not sure why she asked us instead of Anchise, but Oliver had agreed easily enough. He agrees to most things easily enough, it seems.

Years ago when I was still little, I remember sitting on Anchise’s shoulders and picking the limes off the tree. He used to take out his knife and eat them plain, saying it helped his digestion. He would always offer me a piece and I would suck on it until just the rind remained. My mouth floods sour at the memory. 

“It really is sweltering out here.” Oliver pauses again, and in one quick motion, pulls his shirt over his head. It reminds me of the other day, out at the berm, when he had pulled his shirt away after we had kissed to show me his bruise. _Look at me,_ he was saying. _Look at me,_ he is saying again, _but you can’t touch._

It isn’t as if he’s never shirtless; Oliver exists without a shirt more than he ever does with one. I know what his skin looks like, how the bones of his back and shoulders move under his skin, how his ribcage juts out a little bit on the left side. It still makes my stomach curl a little bit, though, especially when he wears the yellow trunks that no longer mean barbs but still fill me with an urge to behave, to be good, lest he turn red and brusque. Especially when I can see sweat clinging to the hollow of his neck, to his chest. Especially since I now know what that chest feels like underneath my hands as he kisses me, and want to feel it again, this time unclothed.

He’s looking at me, and there’s a challenge hidden behind the blue of his eyes. _Touch me, I dare you._ I decide to ignore it – behave.

Oliver cocks an eyebrow. I smirk, apathetic, and turn back to the lime tree. 

I try not to pay attention to him but I end up looking out of the corner of my eye anyway. I watch him reach up and pick one lime, then another, and when he extends and the veins appear on his arm I want to trace them with my fingers. I want to squeeze his bicep, to touch the soft inside of his elbow, to wrap my hands under his armpits and let my palms drift down his abdomen. When he bends to set the lime inside the basket I want to run my fingers over the soft curve of his spine and press into the spaces between each vertebra. 

He is showing off in the way he moves and flexes because he knows I am watching, knows what I am thinking. Knows that however much I wish I was, I am not unaffected. Knows that all I want to do is touch him, to feel him, to kiss him. 

When he reaches up for a third lime, slightly turned away from me, I finally reach out and press a thumb to the left of his belly button. 

He looks at me over his shoulder as he plucks the citrus and then moves to place it in the basket. Challenge is still sparking further in his eyes, in the tilt of his brow, and now I accept it gladly, eagerly. 

I push my palm flat against his stomach and feel him breathe in and out deeply. He curls his fingers over my wrist and squeezes. I press harder, to see what he does, and his fingers only tighten. 

“You know the house is right there, right?” He asks, voice still as light as it was when he was teasing me before, but doesn’t move my hand away from his skin. 

“No one is watching.” I say. 

I shift my hand to the right, pressing my thumb into his belly button this time. Then I take another step towards him. I hear his breathing deepen, and when I get close enough, feel it hot and steady on my cheek. The air between us is hot, tense, drawing me in even when his hand remains still.

I lean into him and lick a strip up the side of his neck. The tang of sweat and salt fills my mouth, replacing the phantom sourness, and I want to lick him all over.

He exhales heavily and moves his hand from my wrist to grasp my elbow. “Elio.” 

“Oliver,” I breathe into his neck and lick the same spot once more, blowing on it slightly afterwards. “Problem?”

His closes his eyes and groans. I want to see how far I can push him, how far I can make him bend before he breaks and pushes me away. Maybe he’ll drag me back into the house and up the stairs by his grip on my arm and bruise me into the wall, into the bed. I desperately want him to pull me into him, even just around the side of the house where no one is watching, and kiss me again. I want to feel his lips against mine, hard and wanting like they were the first time. 

“You,” he says, and opens his eyes to meet mine, “create a lot of problems for me.” 

I think about shrugging, about apologizing, about leaning in again and perhaps creating another problem for him, but ultimately stand still under his hand, under his gaze. Without looking away from him I lick my lips and still taste salt. I wait for him to move.

Oliver’s thumb strokes the inside of my elbow, the same spot where I wanted to touch him, and his grip becomes gentle. He looks at me, just looks at me, and I think for a moment when he glances down at my mouth that he is going to kiss me, out here barely-hidden behind the tree. I can almost already imagine his lips against mine. Slightly chapped, warm, mouth still tasting of coffee and apricots from breakfast. His hand on my shoulder, this time not to push me away but to pull me closer. 

But then his gaze falls to my chest and the moment is gone.

He finally returns my arm to my side and crosses his arms in front of him. Nodding his head towards the basket of limes he says, “I think we have enough, wouldn’t you say?” 

(Two weeks later, he surprises me early one morning with a lime he had stolen from the tree in one hand and a knife in the other. I had told him over lime _gelo_ how I like to eat them raw, and so he cuts me a wedge and presses it against my teeth until just the rind remains. Juice leaks down my chin, down my neck, but he just laves it up. He kisses me until the tartness is gone and all I can taste is warm, soft, familiar, him.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of wanted to play around with the tension that would follow (perhaps not so canonically, since all these sillies do is ignore each other) after their first kiss at the berm, but before their first night together. I know there was only a period of, like, two days or something between the two events but these more uncertain, anticipatory moments are some of my favorite. The script also mentions a scene between the two under a lime tree that was "too precious" to be included in the movie, and although this isn't really what my envisioning of that scene would be, I drew inspiration from that. 
> 
> Also, big thank you to everyone who has read and liked, but also to those who have commented! I didn't really even think this little fic would get any views let alone so many sweet comments. They really do encourage me to keep writing and sharing, which is needed & appreciated right about now. I try my hardest to reply and thank each one of you without rambling too much, because I do that enough already in the notes!
> 
> oh, and lime = lime. easy one there!


End file.
